On Safari in South Africa

Hi everyone!!!
South Africa was amazing!!! I loved it soooo much I could move there, or at least go back again someday!

We arrived in Cape Town on Wednesday morning and went on a wine tasting tour to the winelands for the first day, Our tour guides were waiting outside the ship when we got off and took us to three wineries, Fairview, Stellenbosch, and another one that I can't remember the name of. At Fairview we got to taste 6 different wines and got to have the most amazing cheese with it. Then we went to the second winery where you could choose to taste brandy and chocolate, or wine and nuts. I chose the wine, which was probably a good choice since the brandy was 40% alcohol. After that winery we stopped to have lunch and then went to our last winery. The last winery was Stellenbosch, which had a cheetah reserve on the property. We did our wine tasting and then got to go pet baby cheetahs: pretty cool. The wine in South Africa is amazing and really cheap!!!

After our tour of the winelands, we headed to Table Mountain. The view from Table Mountain was amazing! It looked over the entire city of Cape Town and I felt like I was on top of the world. After table mountain we headed back to the ship to get ready for dinner. A group of us went to dinner in Camps Bay and then went out for a bit on Long's Street, which is the street in Cape Town with a bunch of bars.

The next morning we got up early at 4 30 am for our safari. (I have gotten really good at waking up early on this trip) We drove to the airport and flew into Johannesburg, where we got a charter plane to Hoedspruit. We landed in Hoedspruit and the pilot had to slam on his breaks to avoid hitting two cheetahs that ran across the runway. I was able to snap a photo of them out of the plane window. As you can imagine this was an amazing start to our safari! We got off the plane and straight into our safari jeeps. There was no airport where we landed, so no security or anything. It was really nice. We drove straight from the airport to the Kapama Game Reserve, which was right across the street. We arrived at our hotel, the Kapama River Lodge, which was the most amazing hotel I have ever stayed at. I understand why SAS trips are sooo expensive...we are paying for the accomodations. The pool was an infinite pool that looked over into the "jungle" and there were hippos, buffaloes, giraffes, etc. just hanging out there. We got to the hotel and checked in and had the rest of the afternoon to hangout. We had our first game drive at 4 30 pm after our afternoon tea and coffee. We set off on our game drive with our amazing safari guide Divine and our tracker Harry. Right off the bat we had our first encounter with a herd of elephants. I don't know how it is possible for a herd of elephants to hide behind trees, but these elephants did it so i wasn't able to get great pictures of them. We had originally set out in search of rhinos, but instead we found a female lion and her two 9 month old cubs. We chased them fro a while and in order to do so we had to go off-roading through the jungle. We were taking down trees adn spider webs and tree branches were whacking us in the face, but it was soooo much fun! WE followed them for the rest of the night. We also saw some giraffes. It started to get dark, but our tracker Harry was unbelievable and was able to spot things as tiny as a chameleon and owls in the pitch black. We found a chameleon and Divine took it off the plant and let it crawl on us, it was really cool. It kept climbing up on peoples heads because they like to try to get to the highest point. We started to head back to the hotel around 8, but stopped for a brief lesson on how to find our way in the dark by using the stars. We got back to the hotel just in time for dinner.

The food at the hotel was some of the most amazing food that i have ever had, especially breakfast! After dinner i went to bed pretty early because the next morning we woke up at 4 30 am for our 5am game drive. We saw a cheetah, more giraffes, some zebras, a ton of buffalo, and impala. The Pumbas (Warthogs) were one of my favorite, they were just sooo funny to watch! We headed back to the hotel around 9 for breakfast and then had the rest of the afternoon to hangout. We swam at the pool, had some lunch, and just relaxed until our next evening game drive at 4 30.

On this game drive we saw another female lion, this lion had apparently just been on her honeymoon with the male lion, which meant that the male lion was close by because he always keeps his lady in his sight, so we set out in search of him, Midoda was the male lions name. Harry, our tracker heard the lion roar from a distance and we were able to find it that way. Midoda was beautiful and probably my favorite animal that we saw on the safari. We revved our engine at him and he roared at us, which i have a video of...it is sooo cool. Once it got dark we started searching for the leopards because that is when they come out. Leopards are the hardest out of the big 5 to find. We were extremely lucky to find 2 leopards and we were able to chase them off-road again, which was super cool. I took videos of it because my camera doesnt take great pictures in the dark. After this game drive we had already seen both the diamond and the jewel of a safari (the lion and leopard). We headed back to the hotel for dinner and then i went to bed pretty early again. The next morning we woke up at 4 30 am again for our last game drive. We were setting out to find the rhino, so we could mark off seeing all of the big 5. We didn't really see much on this particular drive because it had been pouring the night before so all the animals were lying down somewhere until it got warmer. However, as we were heading back to the hotel, we came across a female rhino and her baby.

I would say that our safari was pretty successful considering that we saw all of the big 5 plus more. The Big 5 for those of you dont know include: elephant, buffalo, rhino, leopard, and lion.

We headed back to the hotel for breakfast and check out. We checked out and our safari jeeps took us back to the airport, where we didn't have to go through security or anything like that. Our plane was a charter plane so it was all white and looked like a private jet. We got back to Cape Town around 7pm dropped off our stuff and got ready to go out to Longs Street again.

I was supposed to go shark diving the next morning at 5am, but there was a chance that it would be canceled because the wind and the swells were too big. I had to get up at 5 anyway to find out and it turned out that we couldn't go, so i woke up at 5am for no reason. I guess the positive side to this was that i was ready bright and early to go explore CApe Town. I was really upset i didnt get to go shark diving, but i guess that just means that i will have to come back someday!!

We had made a backup plan to get a driver to take us around to all the sites in cape town. We went to the cape of good hope, cape point, a penguin colony, we fed ostrages, which was really fun and one of them bit me when i was trying to feed it. We ended with a visit to a township, which i was glad i got to see. Overall, it was a great day and i really feel like i got to see everything, so in a way i was kind of glad that shark diving was cancelled because i got to see sooo much more of cape town.

We were supposed to leave S Africa for Ghana that evening, but weren't able to because the winds were so strong that it would have been very difficult to get out of the port. We sat in the port until 4 pm the next day. It was really difficult to go to class and look out the window and see cape town, but couldn't get off the ship. I felt like a prisoner of the ship. It is really hard to be on a non moving ship..i dont like it. But we finally left and now we are on our way to Ghana! South Africa was amazing and i am very sad to be gone! I could have been on safari forever...i loved it and dont think i would ever get tired of it!!! For any of you who havent been i would definatily recommend it!!!!!